


The Most Human Colour

by lvckyphan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst and Romance, Gay Male Character, Heavy Angst, Inspired by Art, Love, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 19:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14385393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lvckyphan/pseuds/lvckyphan
Summary: “I’m sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell, and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.” — Richard Siken.It’s easy to dismiss the things we don’t understand as non-existent. Love is a religion and Phil is agnostic.





	The Most Human Colour

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve written this over the course of a few days and it’s something I’m actually proud of, as it turned out the way I wanted it to. It’s based on a short film by a friend of mine that I would highly recommend you watch in reference to this fic. You can watch that [here](https://youtu.be/TUV8XeHMTeo) whether before or after reading this because, honestly, it’s fantastic and I used it for a lot of inspiration in the writing process. As usual, there are topics involved that could be potentially triggering, so please be warned of that and be cautious when reading. If you decide to continue, thank you and I hope you enjoy.

**The Most Human Colour**

_a short story_

**The** man is wearing a red shirt the first time Phil sees him. He’s sat on the curb with his head in his hands and his feet on the tarmac, and his arms are bare and his spine is hunched. It’s some time after two that morning when Phil lights a cigarette and leans against the brick wall, shutting his eyes to the sound of loud music and distant passing cars. He thinks about the absence of the friend he arrived with and the absence of all things divine, as smoke tumbles as carelessly as dance-floor-feet out of his mouth.

As it is, he thinks, absence is rather prevalent in his life and the irony of it all knocks him sick on the sidewalk, twisting his stomach like scraggly fingers sculpting lumps of clay.

He brings his sleeve up to his face and brushes it over his eyes, before shifting his hands to his neck and tugging at the too-tight collar. Wearing a button-down on a night out wasn’t the greatest of ideas, he knows, and the thought is only reiterated as he stands in the stifled air, waiting on the next gust of wind as he used to wait on the seconds between thunderclaps, sitting on his bedroom floor and counting each and every Mississippi.

It doesn’t make as much sense as it used to, for maybe nothing does.

And Phil knows he shouldn’t ponder nostalgia and loneliness in the presence of stale white wine—sloshing about his stomach and moving down the red river of his bloodstream—but he can’t seem to stable himself on one foot or two, with a filthy cigarette or a taste of cold liquor or—

It’s the sound of the man on the curb retching that tempts Phil out of his haziness. With a brief puff of his cigarette and a stubbing of it under his heel, he wanders over to where he’d keeled over and vomiting between his legs, running his fingers through his hair and tugging at the roots.

“Hey, uh,” Phil manages, voice thick in the wake of stale smoke. He coughs and uncomfortably rubs the back of his neck. “You alright there? Do you—Christ, do you want some help?”

He crouches down to the man when he whimpers, and settles at his side when he whines. Maybe it’s the natural instinct, or something, a response to the depth of emotional connection he had with his mother. Though rough around the edges, she was soft at the centre, too soft for her own good and too gentle for the good of others. She was kinder than she often intended to be, sweet like sugar if sugar sometimes tasted like salt and she’s all Phil can think about as he rubs his palm over the man’s back and watches him rid of the contents of his stomach. His legs are long and his frame seemingly lanky but, beneath the glimmer of the nightclub’s neon lighting, he’s frail and wasting away.

Phil counts Mississippis and feels the heat grow on his back.

“Fuck—” The stranger manages after some time, and wipes the back of his hand over his wet mouth. “Fuck, I’m sorry—I’m fine, man, I’m—Thank you, I’m fine.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he slurs, turning to glance at Phil. His eyes are red and swollen and it’s maybe more obvious than either of them would like that he’s had too much to drink when he extends his hand and it trembles, in the same way the leaves do on the branches in late autumn. “Sorry about that. I’m Dan.”

“Phil,” Phil introduces, and shakes his hand. “Can I buy you a drink?”

This Dan laughs, swallowing hard and taking a long inhale before remarking, “I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve had enough.”

“No, no,” Phil shakes his head. “Like, water. A soft drink. Orange juice?”

“It’s best I leave my stomach for a bit,” he says. “But that’s kind of you. Thank you.”

And then he stares ahead at the couple staggering down the street, shouting profanities with their arms in the air. They’re clutching at one another like they’re not able to stand without said support, and Phil just doesn’t understand it.

The alcohol and the relationships.

The romance and the clichés.

It’s just a phoney attempt at purpose, he thinks, and people are so desperate for a taste of the desperation that they’ll tear apart every imprint of dignity like it’s a photographic still produced in a darkroom, soaked through the solution under the harsh gaze of red. And it’s love, Phil supposes, but he doesn’t consider it what he knows he should, and he doesn’t blame himself for that either when he lives in a world that spins for reproduction and physical relation, more inclined to propose prostitution before any kind-of naive infatuation. And it’s ‘love doesn’t exist’ scrawled into the folded corners of age-old fairytales, forgotten happy-endings that sent children to sleep and childhood to bed right along with it when we forced them to realise that we’re selfish by nature and animals by everything else.

And if everything has already been said, then why do we bother to say it?

It’s six weeks later when Dan tells Phil that people shouldn’t talk during productions, and that people are only frightened of silence because they’re frightened of what they’re told lives in it. It’s six weeks later and he’s more honest than he was forty two days ago, more honest than maybe he’s ever been before in his life and Phil appreciates the fact that he’s there in the lonely hours to fill the stillness with a bit of hustle and bustle, the monotony with a bit of meaning but he doesn’t let it counter his religion of a lack of anything at all. Dan exists, he knows, for he breathes against his back when the night falls like a teenage lover but he can’t both be what Phil wants and Phil needs and there’s a truth to that that he doubts most people ever confront.

Falling in love with him, in the grand scheme of things, is less about what it means and more about what it feels like, and Phil can’t explain for all the happy endings in the world what it feels like to fall in love with Dan. It quite quickly becomes apparent that they’re both believers of the notion life is what you make it, and they’ll be the only ones to blame when they make it into nothing but what they didn’t. Phil doesn’t believe in love—as he doesn’t believe in anything much—but he thinks maybe he believes in Dan and he thinks maybe he believes in the likelihood that they’re something to hold on for, that hopeless people need hopeless things just how the oceans need the moon and the glasses need the alcohol.

It happens in the way that umbrellas blow over in the wind, in the way that little hands sign little valentines cards and push them through the postbox. It happens like the awkward placement of a misstep over a sidewalk crack, the high-five we don’t manage to quite catch and the hairline crack in the old windowpane. Falling in love with Dan, Phil finds, is uncomfortable and irrelevant, and he doesn’t really understand but neither does he want to and he supposes that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. There’s a pointlessness to it all that he catches in his fist like a bouquet of flowers but he pretends he did no such thing, and he stuffs them in a bag and disposes of them because if nobody saw then it didn’t happen.

If everything has already been said, then why do we bother to say it?

“You bought me roses?” Dan remarks, taking them from Phil’s grasp across the table. In the restaurant, people aren’t paying attention, and the air is so thick with nonchalance and insignificance that the pair of them should be choking. “Look at you, you goddamn sap. Dinner and now roses? Anyone would think it’s an anniversary.”

Phil shrugs. “It’s not against the law to do something special minus the special occasion, is it?”

And Dan smiles.

He smiles like he doesn’t know what else to do.

Which, Phil thinks, is something he’s getting used to, for Dan doesn’t often smile but it never goes amiss when he does, like snow in the middle of August and roses hand-delivered from the one who doesn’t believe in romantic feeling. 

When he cuts through his steak with cutlery in steady hands, Phil watches as the red is squeezed out of the pink meat before he puts it in his mouth.

And he doesn’t think much about the shade but, when he does, he recognises the relevancy of it in his life. He recognises how good things are often bad, how the colour of blood and bottles of red wine is the same as the colour of roses and Valentine’s Day. That first time they met out there on the curb at two in the morning, Dan was wearing a shirt of exactly the same and sometimes he’ll leave the shower with imprints on the back of his neck, patches of skin in which the water sprayed too hot for him to handle. He’s got lips of the colour and he talks in it too, when they return home from the restaurant late that evening and he dances through the kitchen with such a fondness on his tongue that Phil swears they can both taste it as strong as they can the wine.

“There’s so much that goes on in my head,” he says, and his voice is dancing like his feet are against the black and white tiles. “There’s so much but you’re still in there.”

“I’m still in there?” Phil smiles as though lovesick and too ready to surrender to the beautiful things he doesn’t believe in, standing with his hip against the kitchen counter. The lights are out but there’s a glimmer from the refrigerator door and it’s not enough but it’s something and maybe that’s all either of them need.

“Yeah,” Dan says, or slurs because he’s tipsy. And Phil knows he shouldn’t but he loves the distance to Dan’s eyes, the absent-minded sort-of joy because that’s the only joy it seems they’ll ever get. “You’re good to me and I need that. I don’t admit that I need that, but I need that. They say we need true love, or something, but true love probably needs us, like the rain needs the grey skies and the summer needs the green grass. People aren’t good to me, Phil, and it doesn’t matter whether or not I deserve it. It matters that you think I do, which is more than I can say for anyone else.”

Phil stands in the kitchen and stuffs his hands into his pockets, fighting the flattery but feeling it consume him nevertheless. And he supposes all he is is another cliché, just another way to say ‘ _too good to be true_ ’ and ‘ _the best things are also often the worst_.’ And as he watches Dan stumble over his own feet and giggle at his poor state of mind, he wonders why it is the way it is, why we try to fight fire with fire and try to match immoral behaviour with what—in any other case—would be considered the equivalent. We don’t know a whole lot more than the fact that clocks have no beginning and circles have no end, and maybe all we’ve ever known is nothing more than what we’ve been told.

“Well,” Phil manages, eventually. He’s had a bit too much to drink also, but he’d never confess to it. “I do think you deserve it. You deserve everything, Dan, and I’m trying to convince you of that.”

“Look,” Dan breathes, as he spins on one foot. He’s a dancer to a rhythmless tune and he steps out of time to the infrequent beat, so blasé that Phil catches himself admiring the very shift of his body. He shuffles across to the counter and switches the radio on, fixing the satellite and turning the volume up to entertain the emptiness with a melodic theme. “We should dance, Phil, come on. I want to dance with you. Come here.”

He approaches and takes Phil’s hand, and it’s as easy as closed eyes and falling asleep to the sound of white noise. They follow one another’s movements and become like a sort-of tidal wave, the very moment in which the ocean meets the seafront and undertakes it. And Phil counts the passing Mississippis as he hooks his hands around Dan’s shoulders and feels Dan lean his weight against his chest, the music loud and crackling through the radio.

_No, no._

It’s imperfect and defective, the scene like a pretty picture in which an artist spilled his paint and Phil wants to kiss him but he wouldn’t dare take the risk.

Phil wants to kiss him but they’re a river with the plug pulled from the centre—a boat sailing to the end of the world—and he doesn’t fucking believe in them so he doesn’t fucking do it.

But if he did, he thinks, Dan would taste like cold cigarettes and red wine left out in the sun. He’d taste like a mouthful of soapy bath water and too much sugar in a lukewarm mug of tea and maybe he doesn’t do it because he’s frightened he won’t like it, but maybe the only thing he’s fighting here is himself.

_Never fall in love again._

“I’m ugly on the inside,” Dan suddenly slurs, as the music continues from afar in the background. “I’m so ugly and you have no idea.”

Phil doesn’t say anything, but he wraps an arm around the man and wonders what he’d find if he plucked apart his ribcage and reached down between the cracks.

In the kitchen that night, he wants to tell him that he cares for him. He wants to tell him that he feels the things he knows he doesn’t for other people, that sometimes he swears he can’t control himself when he’s there in his vicinity. Though he’s accustomed to things not making a lot of sense, this is particularly unsettling and this is unnecessarily stressful and—

_No, no._

Phil puts his face against Dan’s shoulder and closes his eyes.

He sees raindrops and a busy street, as they sway together and cling to the fact that it’s a fact they have something to cling to and it’s a fact romantic feelings are smothering the truth of the matter like a pillowcase smothering each breath. It’s a fact that they’re both already too involved and it’s a fact that they’re unwillingly leaning towards one another in the same way a tree-branch leans towards the direction of the wind, taking up the fallen autumn leaves and the tossed remnants of week-old litter. Milk cartons and soggy sandwiches, crisp packets and empty cans and—

_Never fall in love again._

Phil’s kissing Dan at a bus stop some time into the ninth week, his mouth against his mouth and then his mouth against his throat and there’s a storm growing on the horizon just how this man has grown on him. If asked, he wouldn’t be able to explain how it happened, but he’d probably say something along the lines of it being out of his control, being a pathetic act of fate or an attempt by the universe to gather them in its palms and place them both beside one another, nudging and nudging until they finally fucking meet. They’re chess pieces and lazy crosswords, a game of Cluedo and a Sudoku puzzle but who the fuck is to say that this didn’t happen for a reason? Who the fuck is to say that they’re nothing but an enigma, another pairing amongst the millions and millions of others that all look exactly the same?

There’s no evidence to prove that they’re different, Phil knows, but there’s no evidence to prove that they’re not.

There’s no evidence to prove that they didn’t change the course of existence, to prove that their first encounter didn’t erase the mistakes from a prewritten catalogue of events. Maybe they prevented a natural disaster, or something, an atomic bomb or an incoming meteorite.

“Phil,” Dan whispers, and nudges his nose against Phil’s cheek. It’s raining and their clothes are soaked through. “Come and visit me, yeah? Come down and visit me.”

“Come to Manchester?” Phil returns, just as tender.

“Yeah,” he says. “I don’t know when I’ll next be able to travel here and I miss you already.”

“I’ll visit in a few weeks,” Phil tells him, and kisses his cheek. He threads a hand through Dan’s curls and tilts his head back to reattach their lips, allowing himself to momentarily melt against the taste like ice cream against the sunlight. “Let me know when you’re free and I promise I'll visit, okay?”

And it’s a promise he’ll keep, for his skin is already itching at the mention of being separated from Dan. He drives himself very-nearly insane with the idea of a lonely house and an empty side of the bed, a vacant kitchen and a silent hallway. And it’s there at the bus stop that he wants to tell him he loves him, wants to put his face against his chest to follow along with each drum of his heartbeat, chasing it down and letting it drown him. The breeze is cold and the rain just that bit colder but he swears neither of them feel it for he swears neither of them feel anything but one another, the emotions and the intakes and the prickling of tender goosebumps. Their faces are red and the bus just the same when it pulls up behind them, and Dan squeezes Phil’s waist with a faint clenching of his jaw like he can’t quite believe he’s returning home and he can’t quite believe he’s in this position before bidding his reluctant farewell.

There’s no ‘ _love you_ ’ or ‘ _of course, I love you too_.’

There’s no agonising delay or uncomfortable silence.

On the street that day, there’s nothing but a storm and a connection that doesn’t make sense, a connection to fill the void and a connection to bide the time. Somebody should have told them, maybe, that we can’t fight fire with fire and we can’t fight sorrow with desire because sadness is sadness irregardless of how inconvenient, and sometimes no amount of beauty in the world can match how ugly we really fucking feel. Sometimes no amount of love can truly convince us that it exists—or _existed_ , once in a lifetime—and no amount of self-worth can convince us that we’re entitled to stand up for what we believe, to challenge the opinions of the ones we value most or to walk away from those that hurt us in the name of ‘ _just being honest_.’

Phil returns to silence and thinks about Dan.

And Dan returns to loneliness and thinks about Phil.

And they shouldn’t but they do, wouldn’t but they did, and they swear this is something nobody else could have experienced because _surely_ this kind-of love doesn’t repeat itself. _Surely_ this kind-of love isn’t wasted on the ordinary and the everyday, the simple and the tedious and the ‘ _I’ve seen it all before, you asshole, I’ve seen it all before_.’

It’s not a love from a movie or a love from a novel.

It’s not a verse or a stanza, a scene or a quotation because this is different and this is unique and they’re the people together that they always wanted to be, the people they convinced themselves they never could be because if dreams come true then nightmares do too and nobody can handle that.

There’s so much that goes on in Dan’s head and so much that goes in Phil’s and they know all too goddamn well that the best things in life are also often the worst.

( _No, no, no, no_ —)

When the credits roll and floodlights go out—

( _No, no, no, no_ —)

—will we be pleased with who we became?

( _I’ll never, I’ll never_ —)

Or are we the same as everyone else—

( _Fall in love again_ —)

—who swears all they’ll be is ashamed?

A promise is made in the name of a happy ending and Phil keeps his word, visiting the city of Manchester with a bag of his belongings and a dead mobile phone. The first time isn’t the last time but it’s the time that he takes Dan down to the local fair, where they brew beer and sell popcorn and ride the Manchester Eye. The candy floss is pink and the hotdogs too hot, and Dan gets ketchup on his fingers and in the corner of his mouth.

“God,” Phil mumbles, reaching forward to wipe his thumb over the stain. “Why am I letting myself be seen out with you?”

Dan scoffs. “This is my city, therefore I’m being seen out with _you._ And I’m just enjoying myself, you should try it some time.”

He tosses his litter into the nearest bin and brushes the crumbs off of his hands.

“Are you scared of heights?” Phil questions, peering up at the Eye towering above them.

Dan shrugs and reaches down to entangle their fingers. “I used to be, but not anymore. I mean, I don’t think so. Why? Are you?”

“A little,” Phil admits. “Do you want to ride the Eye? I’ll pay.”

“You want to ride _that_?”

“I’m asking whether you want to ride that.”

To which Dan mutters, “Yeah, go on then,” and tugs on Phil’s hand, guiding him towards the small queue of people. 

As they wait behind a group of teenagers, Phil wonders just how ugly Dan is on the inside. He’s stood there with circus lights cast over his tanned skin, igniting the colour in his cheeks like the cigarette they shared before they arrived. His eyes say that he’s too terrified to admit that he’s terrified but his hand has a firm grip on Phil’s and everything they know is a lie, but not one they’re willing to confront.

Deception is red, Phil thinks, the shade of roses and the shade of sweet lipstick and the shade of the paint that gets caught under nails. Deception is sunburn and deception is a first aid kit, an emergency call and a broken police siren. It can’t be washed away in cold showers or dirty dishwater, and the taste lingers on the tongue as the smell does in the nostrils.

It’s at the top of the Eye that Phil first says it, a hand on Dan’s knee and his eyes downcast to the city below. It’s perfect but it’s not because he’s learnt that love isn’t, and it’s better that way because it feels so much more human.

The Manchester lights are distant and definite, looking like lanterns and burning like them too. Phil says, “I love you,” and Dan shuts his eyes, for maybe he too has to allow himself the time to understand that this wasn’t how they’d have planned it if they’d have planned it at all but, goddamn, doesn’t that make it gorgeous?

Doesn’t that make it special?

Doesn’t that make _them_ special?

“I love you, too,” he says, and shuffles across the metal seat to settle against Phil’s side. “What a cliché, Lester. If everything has already been said, then why do we bother to say it?”

And then he smiles like he did that once in the restaurant, and it’s likely that he’s realised he could never comprehend the gravity of such a question. It isn’t one that either of them will ever have the answer for, as they utter sentences that have already been uttered and tell stories that have already been told and it’s the most depressing thing in the world to think that, in the end, people won’t remember your intentions because actions speaker louder than words.

People won’t remember what you wanted to do, they’ll instead remember what you did.

So Phil kisses Dan at the top of the Eye and tells him that he loves him more than he thought he was capable of, and he feels the shift in atmosphere like the spacemen felt it on the moon. They still believe that they’re different—or, rather, what they have is different—and they’re not kids but they might as well be as they catch a train of such naive thought. The world of romance is a fucking lonely one, and love is a hopeless troglodyte that we can’t seem to accept won’t evolve for very many years. It feeds on retched innocence and we might as well all be children for love is a childish thing, an awkward smile and a sappy letter and an excuse to buy what we know we can’t afford. And if they took a moment to think about what it truly was, they’d realise that it was nothing but ironic, a concept that flourishes most prominently in childhood but that we swear doesn’t grow flowers until we’re too old to remember what it felt like.

It’s easy to dismiss the things we don’t understand as non-existent.

Love is a religion and Phil is agnostic.

_I’ll never see that searchin’ smile._

Before they depart the fair that evening, the pair engage in a petty game that costs them each a few coins. They don’t know what they’re playing for but they play for it anyway, and Phil eventually wins the second round after scoring three targets in a row.

The man passes him a clear bag of water, and he snorts at the goldfish that swims aimlessly in circles at the bottom.

“No fucking way,” Dan remarks, with a loud laugh and a prod of the bag. “You won a goldfish.”

“It’s a gift,” Phil says, and passes the bag to Dan. “Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, let’s celebrate in style.”

He rolls his eyes. “Where the hell am I supposed to put this?”

“A tank?”

“Phil.”

Phil shrugs. “I’ll buy you one, or something. What’re you gonna call him?”

Dan watches the fish for a while, squinting his eyes and chewing his lip before deciding, “Goldie.”

“ _Goldie_?”

Dan ruffles Phil’s hair and kisses him quickly, then bops his nose and heads off towards the exit.

_You were the judge, I lost the trial._

Several weeks later, after Phil has returned home, Dan doesn’t answer his calls and doesn’t respond to his messages. The contact is there and then—all of a sudden—not, and he tries and he tries but nothing comes of it. He swears he’s done something wrong and recalls each and every word, obsesses over the state of their relationship and keeps himself up at night.

It’s on a Saturday afternoon that he packs a bag and heads off to Manchester, in search of both answers and reason to calm his nerves. Love is a religion and Phil is agnostic but, if Dan was a God, he’d preach and he’d pray. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t generally believe in divine things, he thinks, for Dan is divine and Dan is all he ever wanted, extravagant and beautiful and bright on the darkest of nights. And when he opens his front door, his eyes are heavy and his lips are chapped, and he’s still beautiful and still divine but Phil’s stomach twists and he steps forward and takes him in his arms.

“What happened?” he whispers, with Dan against his chest. Maybe he should be angry, but he’s nothing of the sort. “Baby, what happened?”

“Nothing, it—” Dan chokes and pushes his face into the crook of Phil’s neck. “It’s college and bills and the future and stuff. I don’t want to do it, Phil, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m so tired and all I want to do is sleep.”

They’re in the hallway with entangled limbs and shaking frames, and Phil’s teeth are chattering from the cold but Dan clings to his body like it’s a reason to stay alive. He clings to his body like it’s the only thing he has left, like it’s peace and salvation and one step closer to what he craves but cannot explain. Maybe he’s tired of wanting something and not getting it, of believing in the shit he knows doesn’t exist and it’s a mess of trying too hard and struggling to keep up with himself and—

“It’s okay,” Phil whispers, and kisses his prominent cheekbone. “I’m here now, it’s okay. Don’t cry, Dan, you don’t have to cry.”

“I just want to sleep,” Dan whimpers. “Drink and sleep and—”

“You shouldn’t drink when you’re sad, love. You shouldn’t drink on your own.”

_I guess I’ll never fall in love._

Dan shakes his head and cries like a child who just doesn’t understand what he’s crying about. “I don’t care, Phil, everything is shit and I don’t care. I-I just want to feel better.”

Phil doesn’t get it, but he doubts Dan does either.

As it’s about mending the cracks with temporary solutions, he makes tea and brings it to Dan in bed, setting it at his side and crouching down to tuck the sheets in around his chin.

“Try not to stress about anything, okay?” he manages, though he knows it’s unrealistic and knows it’s very unlikely. “Get some sleep, you’re exhausted. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

His eyelids flutter in the dim room. “I’m sorry, Phil. I love you, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Phil says. And then he mutters that he loves him just as much, and that he wishes he could make it easier but nothing of the sort will ever be within his reach. All he can be is apologetic and empathetic, there when he’s needed and there when he’s not. This is something out of the control of anything remotely human, something far above the grasp of long arms and desperate hands. This is too difficult to comprehend and too difficult to truly counter, the first bolt of lightning in a storm nobody predicted. And Phil wants to tell Dan that everything will be okay, that this is but a setback and he just has to wait it out, counting Mississippis like they’re alternative ways to say that nothing should be this complicated and nothing should be this confusing.

He’s pathetic enough to believe that he can love Dan enough to wish this away.

But of course, there’s something inside of him that knows he can do no such thing, not because he doesn’t love Dan enough but because there’s no amount of love in the world that can counter the depth of this pain.

_No, no, no, no._

Dan drinks in the name of drowning his sorrows, drinks so much that he blacks out and wakes up in his own fucking vomit. He drinks so much that he steals and lies and uses and cheats, sleeps around and leaves Phil at home wondering what the fuck could have gone wrong and what the fuck actually did, for this isn’t what love is and this isn’t what theirs is. They’re not about the filthy stuff, not about the naked truths or the dirty mistakes because they’re nothing but an appearance, a broadcasted performance and Phil’s seen it all a thousand times, read himself in romance novels and watched himself in soppy movies and he’s just waiting for the happy ending but who the fuck ever decided that a conclusion to anything was entitled to be happy?

Who the fuck ever decided that _they_ were entitled to be happy?

_I’ll never kiss your lips._

Expectation leads to nothing but disappointment, friends and lovers and parents and friends and friends and friends and—

“It’s not my fault you’re being so fucking sensitive,” Dan growls, shoving at Phil’s chest and watching as he stumbles back. “This is my apartment and this is my fucking life—Why don’t you just leave if you don’t like it?”

“Is that it?” Phil seethes, from behind clenched teeth. “Really, Dan? Is that the best you’ve got? I’m up all hours of the night worrying my ass off about you, calling and texting and now suddenly this is my fault? I’m trying to help you and you’re throwing it back in my fucking face. What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you acting like this?”

“You’re pissing me off,” Dan threatens, and starts pacing the hallway with his hands in his hair. “You’re seriously pissing me off, Phil, I don’t want to do this with you right now. I’m tired and you’re being dramatic.”

“You _cheated_ on me—”

“It wasn’t fucking cheating!” he yells. “How many fucking times do I have to tell you? I didn’t know what I was doing, I was out of control—I’d taken so much and that guy could have been anyone.”

_No, no, no, no._

“He could have been anyone,” Phil repeats, all monotone and empty of feeling. “Ouch. You’re so good at defending yourself that I should just quit whilst I’m ahead, huh?”

Dan’s breathing so quick that Phil can’t keep up, and he thinks about him taking drugs and kissing somebody else and it’s a blade in the left side of his chest, salt in his wounds and a smack across the face and he realises with tingling skin that he never should have fucking done it. He never should have fucking touched this man, offered his hand and his shoulder to cry on because he doesn’t know what love is but he knows it isn’t this. The best things are also often the worst and everything is red, wilted roses and smeared lipstick stains. Phil is suddenly terrified of the shade, terrified when he shuts his eyes and it’s all he can fucking see and terrified when he wakes up from a nightmarish doom and it’s all he can fucking taste. He’s yelling and screaming and throwing shit at the walls, demanding answers to the questions nobody has the answers to and maybe this is all his fucking fault but God knows he isn’t the first one to lose himself in the process of trying to find another.

_I’ll never touch your fingertips._

Dan drinks red wine and Phil packs his bags, and Dan throws the bottle and Phil tells him he doesn’t love him. It shouldn’t be as easy to say as ‘ _you are everything to me_ ’ had once been, but it is and they know it and that’s what would hurt the most, if either of them could feel anything at all.

Harsh words and crumbled walls.

Clenched fists and broken glass.

Maybe Dan is just as ugly on the inside as he can be on the out, and maybe Phil always suspected so but who the fuck doesn’t exchange the truth for some well-crafted dishonesty every once in a while?

Who the fuck doesn’t lie to themselves and the rest of the world in the name of protecting the ones they love?

When the bottle smashes against the wall and shatters the delicacy like forecasted rain on a wedding day, Phil thinks about kissing Dan with the sheets over their heads, thinks about finding him and cradling him in his arms. He thinks about the baby photos he dug out of the box under his bed, the images capturing the moments of childhood we remember but can never quite place, building sandcastles on the beach in the middle of summer and sitting before a birthday cake with chocolate smeared over our mouths. What Dan is to Phil is what innocence is to a child, something irreplaceable for it’s never quite the same after it’s been tampered with for the first time and we can never get it back. We can never patch it up, never wrap it in bandages and set it down just as good as new because it’s a favourite soft toy sent through the washing machine, a favourite soft toy bought as a replacement for the one lost out in the adult world.

Phil thinks about how terrifying it is to be alone.

And he cleans up the shards of the wine bottle from where they lay beneath the fish tank, brushing the pieces into the bin and leaving his bags in the hallway.

He shouldn’t, but he stays.

And Dan shouldn’t, but he lets him.

And it’s nothing more than what they both want but know they could never handle, for they’re not cut out for this romance thing and this romance thing isn’t cut out for them. It’s a mess and it’s a red one, and it’s suddenly all about cheating faces and locked bathroom doors. It’s suddenly all about what Dan smells like when he returns home, how vile he can be and why he has no fucking excuse for it but that he’s tired of the world being vile to him. And Phil doesn’t know the words to preach to Dan that we can’t fight fire with fire, can’t throw stones at the people who threw stones at us because life isn’t about survival, life is about how we survive it. Life is about the precautions we take and actions we make, the colours and the reasons and the situations we can’t prevent but the situations we learn from because there’s nothing more to this than taking something from it.

Phil’s smoking cigarettes at the kitchen table when he realises that the world doesn’t owe him anything, and he’s got to stop thinking that it does. He shouldn’t do shit for the response, he should shit for the outcome because this is _his_ fucking life and these are _his_ fucking words.

The smoke tastes like death and Phil’s breathing it right in.

And Dan’s wrists are hurting and Phil doesn’t know where to start.

And in the haze of too much alcohol two nights before the last, Phil’s still scrubbing the wine from the carpet after Dan lashed out and threw it at him. The goldfish is swimming in circles in the tank and the rain is falling in hailstones against the glass and they’re not fucking talking but they’re communicating in sounds, the slams of bedroom doors and the grumbles under their breaths.

“I told you to leave that,” Dan says, and Phil jolts before turning to glance behind him. “Get up, I’ll do it.”

Phil ignores him and continues scrubbing the carpet, wringing out the cloth and then scrubbing some more.

“Phil,” Dan pauses. “For fuck’s sake, I’m talking to you. Leave that, get up.”

“It’s fine,” Phil mutters, and grinds his teeth like he used to as a child. “One of us has got to do it.”

“It was my fault. Let me clean up the mess _I_ made.”

_Here I stand._

It’s an apology, maybe, or it’s just a manner of speech. But when Phil doesn’t get up from the floor and Dan doesn’t know what the fuck else to do, he leans down and grabs his shirt, tugging him back and spitting, “I _said_ , let me do it—”

“Get off me,” Phil snaps, dropping the cloth and pushing Dan’s hands away. “Get the fuck off me, I’m doing this.”

Dan’s jaw is clenched and his face is red when he wraps his hands around Phil’s shoulder and pulls him to his feet. He reaches for the cloth but Phil’s there to swat his hand away—feeling it snap in his chest, tremble and crack like a pane of age-old glass—and slam him against the wall.

He shouldn’t, but he does.

They shouldn’t, but they did.

_My heart’s still doing flips._

“What are you doing?” he growls, and everything is red when Dan punches and pushes, kicks and screams and Phil fights back.

If everything has already been said, then why do we bother to say it?

“You’re so fucking _pathetic_!” Dan’s yelling. “You’re so fucking pathetic and I fucking _hate_ you—Why are you even still here, huh? Why are you even still here if you want to treat me like shit?”

“ _You_ treated _me_ like shit when you fucked somebody else, you insensitive prick—” Phil spits at him, right in his face. “How have you managed to turn this around? You’re the fucking victim now, are you? I hate you, Dan, I don’t ever want to see you again—You’re driving me insane, look at me! Look at what you’ve done!”

“What _I’ve_ done?”

“This isn’t my goddamn fault, Dan!” he shouts, tearing at the ends of his hair. “I’m just trying to help you and you keep throwing it back in my face! Are you out of your mind, or something? Why are you incapable of doing anything for anybody else? You’ve _ruined_ this!”

_No, no, no, no._

Phil’s angry and he doesn’t mean it.

Dan’s angry and he probably does.

Their mouths are bleeding and their lips are bruised, and maybe there’s such a thing as loving somebody too much. Maybe there’s such a thing as wanting the best but also wanting the worst, wanting peace but also wanting chaos and they’re the epitome of a typical romance but they don’t write this in the novels. They don’t write the bad shit, the ugly shit and the sad shit because tragedies sell but reality doesn’t.

“Why don’t you just fucking go, Phil?” Dan has Phil’s shirt tight in his fists. “Just fucking go and never come back—”

“What, and let _you_ win?”

“It’s not about _winning_!”

“No, it’s about what you’ve fucking done to me, Dan! It’s about how shit you make me feel, how—”

“Shut up!” Dan screams, and there’s a bolt of lighting amongst the hail outside as he grabs Phil’s head and shoves his face into the filthy water of the tank. It’s violent and disgusting, raw and horrific and—

_I’ll never fall in love again._

Love is a religion and Phil is agnostic, and he fights back against Dan’s hold as the water spills like paint down the beige walls. He claws out of his grasp and frees himself choking, crying and spluttering, “You’re fucking insane,” before wrapping his arm around Dan’s neck and forcing him himself down into the tank.

It’s red and ironic and they’re pathetic fucking hypocrites and Phil brings him out of the water just to shove him back in again, cutting the flesh of his throat on the sharp edge of the tank. And that night, there’s nothing but a storm and a connection that doesn’t make sense, a connection to fill the void and a connection to bide the time. Somebody should have told them, maybe, that we can’t fight fire with fire and we can’t fight sorrow with desire because sadness is sadness irregardless of how inconvenient, and sometimes no amount of beauty in the world can match how ugly we really fucking feel. Sometimes no amount of love can truly convince us that it exists—or _existed_ , once in a lifetime—and no amount of self-worth can convince us that we're entitled to stand up for what we believe, to challenge the opinions of the ones we value most or to walk away from those that hurt us in the name of ‘ _just being honest_.’

Phil’s there on the street, holding Dan as he vomits and there in the room, holding Dan as he bleeds.

_I’ll guess I’ll just remember when we used to be in love._

Red wine and red blood.

Broken ambulance lights and foreign first-aid kits, whimpers and apologises and one step too far.

People shouldn’t talk during productions, Phil believes, and people are only frightened of silence because they’re frightened of what they’re told lives in it. Phil is more honest with himself than he used to be, more honest than maybe he’s ever been before in his life and Dan exists, he knows, for he breathes against his back when the night falls like a teenage lover but he can’t both be what Phil wants and Phil needs and there’s a truth to that that he doubts most people ever confront.

Falling in love with him, in the grand scheme of things, was less about what it meant and more about what it felt like, and Phil can’t explain for all the happy endings in the world what it felt like to fall in love with Dan but he knows it happened—somewhere, somehow—and he knows there are things he will never admit to.

Dan is wearing a grey shirt that night, but it’s soaked through with blood and the fabric is red. He’s slumped on the floor with his lips a pale blue and his skin a white it’s never been, and his arms are bare and his spine is hunched. It’s some time after two when Phil lights a cigarette and leans against a kitchen cupboard, shutting his eyes to the sound of loud sobbing and distant passing cars. He thinks about the absence of the lover he arrived with and the absence of all things divine, as smoke tumbles as carelessly as dance-floor-feet out of his mouth.

He counts each and every Mississippi that passes before the ambulance arrives, and each and every Mississippi that passes before he can finally get out, “I’m so fucking sorry, I’m sorry fucking sorry—I love you, I’m so fucking sorry.”

But it doesn’t make as much sense as it used to.

It’s an apology, maybe, or it’s just a manner of speech.

Because people shouldn’t talk during productions.

And if everything has already been said, then why do we bother to say it?


End file.
